Rebels of Babylon (28 page)

“Oh, I couldn’t do that, begging your pardon. I really couldn’t, sir.”

“I know you are very fond of Mr. Pickwick. But there is a host of instructive characters, all waiting to introduce themselves. Really, Mr. Barnaby … Pip … Mr. Gargery—who is the very model of a Christian—the spurned old woman, the vain beauty … and Magwitch, who is wonderfully reformed …”

Mr. Barnaby shook his head, slowly but with decision. “I couldn’t do it, sir. Really, I couldn’t. It’s all too awful and ’orrible. I couldn’t bear to undertake the experience of more suffering. And people always suffers in a novel, sir, if it’s worth the ink and paper.” He battled the damp rebellion in his eyes. “I’ve even ’ad to give up reading about Mr. Pickwick, I ’as. I couldn’t bear it no more, knowing as ’ow all ’is ’appiness is bound to be torn from ’is bosom. Not all Sam Weller’s wits can’t save the poor man, sir. ’E goes to ’is sufferings over and over again. Without end, sir, without end! As if that Charlie Dickens ’as trapped ’im up forever in the pages, so ’e can’t never escape. It ain’t Christian, if a fellow such as me dare point it out. It ain’t near honest to pin a fellow down on the page so’s ’e can’t get up again, to make ’is sufferings eternal, so to speak, without no ’ope of recovery by and by. Even the voodoo lot ain’t cruel as that. At least not most-wise.” His features begged for a kinder world. “A writer fellow must be ’orrible wicked, sir, to go killing folks with ink and making everyone suffer for ’is pleasure. And for profit, sir! The scribblers takes money to make the innocent suffer in their books. It just ain’t right to do a thing like that.”

“Then read the Holy Bible,” I advised him. Startled I was by the reversal of our positions. I could not think of anything else to say.

“I’ve tried that, I ’as. Reading the Gospels and what-not. But it’s even worse than taking up a novel. What they done to poor Jesus, after ’e tried so ’ard to be nice to all of ’em. ’E wouldn’t ’urt a fly, and look what they does to ’Im.” His eyes gazed through the window as he recalled his collisions with the word of the Lord. “And as for that Old Testament, the parts what
ain’t Bedlam mad are mean enough to keep a fellow from ever trusting ’is neighbor, what with all those wicked kings and smitings and general misbehaviors. And it do take a terrible long time only to tell us we ought to behave ourselves better.” He shook his head in the deep sorrow of memory. “Poor Jesus ends up even worse than Pickwick.”

“The Gospels,” I attempted to explain, “bear tidings of God’s sacrifice for Mankind.”

Mr. Barnaby returned his eyes and sagging cheeks to me. “But I doesn’t
want
’Im to sacrifice ’Is son, sir. It ain’t ’alf right, that. When the poor lad ain’t done nothing the least bit wrong. It’s a punishment ’e didn’t deserve. And I suspects ’e didn’t ask for it, neither. No, sir. It’s too much like this war of ours, started by the fathers in their pride and fought out with the blood of the lads they sired. There’s been too much of that sort of thing, if you asks Barnaby B. Barnaby. I’d like the Gospels better, I would, if Jesus ended up old and plump and ’appy.”

IT GREW EVIDENT that, for the present, Mr. Barnaby was no more susceptible to the beauties of our faith than Jimmy Molloy or even Mick Tyrone. Queer it is that so many of the fellows of whom I am fond will not be led to salvation. I hope in time to help them see the light.

Meanwhile, Mr. Barnaby had calmed sufficiently for me to risk a query or two. I would have liked to begin by asking about the message in the pot, but knew enough of men to see that first he would need to free himself of any news he had about the girl.

“What’s this about the lass, then?” I asked. “Alive, is it?”

“I can’t say exactly what’s wherefore, sir. And I can’t say precisely what ’appened. But I know she’s alive, as sure as my father’s own name was Barnaby Barnaby.”

“But what evidence have you?”

He leaned toward me, making the mattress lament. “It was whispered to me, it was. Whispered in a crowd. I was making my enquiries among the lads I knows in the
Faubourg
Marigny—about
your Fishers of Men, sir—when a negro comes up behind where I can’t see ’im and whispers in my ear, ‘She’s alive, and she ain’t been spoiled.’ But when I turned myself about to confront ’im, sir, all I saw was the back of ’is wooly ’ead.”

Considering the fellow’s distraught condition, I asked, “Are you certain, then, that all was not imagined? Look you. Many’s the wish so strong it plays with our senses.”

He shook his head. “On my honor, as a gentleman’s gent and one-time ’aberdasher. If I’m speaking of phantoms, may I never ’ave me appetite back again, sir. May I never see bread nor buttermilk.”

“All right, man. If such words were, indeed, spoken, then why? Why should anyone tell you such a thing? If not to deceive us?”

He rolled his shoulders, which were considerably narrower than his hips. “What’s the sense in anything anymore, sir? The whole world’s at sixes and sevens.”

“But someone may be trying to mislead you. To divert my attention.”

“But she’s alive, sir! That ought to count for something.”

“Perhaps it is only a lie,” I cautioned, although I believed myself that the poor lass lived, that the blood splashed about my room was a false concoction. I did not want to raise his hopes too high. “Why should we credit a whisper from a stranger?”

“Why doubt it, sir? Why doubt it? Ain’t you forever preaching we must ’ave faith? It seems to me, it do, that the odds is even as to whether the fellow meant to do us ill or meant ’er good.”

“Even so … what would you have me do?”

At that, he slumped profoundly. “I was ’oping you’d ’ave an idea yourself, sir. For I’m all out. The pockets of my brain are empty, and them what was willing to talk to me was them what had nothing to say. I ain’t come forward an inch with your Fishers of Men, sir. Scared up and down the street, folks are. I never seen the negroes in such fear.”

“Mr. Barnaby … if you please … we must set this matter of the girl aside. Do not be alarmed. I mean only for a time. There
is another business to attend to.” I walked over to the medicine pot, took out the message and handed it to my comrade. As for the jar itself, I kept it in hand as I sat back down, for my mouth wanted painting again, with the hurt resurgent.

“Can you understand the meaning of the scribble?” I asked, fingering up a generous dollop of salve. “Who is Queen Manweler, can you tell me?”

“Oh, that’s more odds than evens,” he said vaguely, studying the paper with a confounded look. Next, he examined me anew, as I rubbed my finger over the meat in my mouth. I was not certain what to make of his countenance.

His features shifted unexpectedly, like mercury at play. Twas clear he was thinking hard before returning to speech, but that may be a virtue as well as a vice. It was the complexity of his expressions, their contradiction from one moment to the next, that concerned me. Mr. Barnaby’s face had ever been a thing of India rubber, able to convey character or foolery. Now it told me less of him than at any time I recalled from our term of acquaintance. Instead of revealing the man himself, his face reflected the world beyond the window, all the secrets and loyalties of his city.

At last, he spoke. “White men doesn’t know a thing about ’er. Not even ’er name, which”—he dropped his voice to a hush—“is Queen Manuela. Lord bless us.” He crossed himself instantly, in the fashion of Rome, then scrutinized me with redoubled concern. “And you shouldn’t speak ’er name out so plain, sir, begging your pardon. You ain’t to know that such a body exists.”

“But
you
know! And you are as white as I am myself, man. It does not follow that she is so great a secret.”

He turned his head from side to side. Torpidly, as if degraded by opium. “You ’as to understand … that some things is always tucked away by the negroes, sir. And among them what’s lumped in with ’em. It’s ’ow they survives, ’ow they lives and gets on. There’s doings what’s
only for show, and things what ain’t. With the voodoo now … there’s part of it what’s only meant to draw in money from foolish folk, black or white. Most of the shows are no more than street-corner prancing moved out to the bayous. The truth is, begging your pardon, sir, that the voodoo priestesses, the most of ’em, is just as greedy as your Christian parson, expecting to be paid for praising one god or another and for squeezing you into their prayers. Most of ’em just knows a pair of mumbles, if that. They deals in poisons and potions made up of roots, in charms and such like. It ain’t really supernatural at all.”

He paused and eyed me as closely as a tailor judging not only a man’s size, but the quality of fabric that must be offered. “But then there’s them what believes, sir. What
really
believes. As sure as the Oxford Martyrs. They goes about it more quiet like, that sort, and they doesn’t ever let a white man see.”

“Then how do
you
know all this? Good Lord, I might as well be back in India.”

“All’s one, sir, all’s one. My little Marie, now … you might say she was something of a chameleon, Major Jones. Whoever looked at ’er saw what color they expected to see. You, begging your pardon, would’ve judged ’er as white as Queen Victoria.”

“You imply that your—”

“I never asked, sir. Never a single time. When a fellow’s in love, ’e only makes a fool of ’imself and wounds them what ’e adores by asking questions. ‘Let the past be,’ that’s my motto. My grandfather what served with Pakenham passed down that advice. And my father took it to ’eart and left it to me.” He looked at me imploringly. “I know you doesn’t approve of things slipping out of their regular traces, sir. But ’appiness is a rare thing in this world. I’ve never thought there was any sense in questioning it too close when it come knocking. I didn’t care what my Marie was in ’er blood or in ’er background. It was enough and more that she made me ’appy.”

“But your children …”

“Oh, they was lovely, sir! Lovely as Devon in May. I mourns ’em daily.”

“Your wife … knew of these unholy rituals? Of this Queen Manuela?”

Mr. Barnaby looked about the room, as if their might be devils in the woodwork. “Don’t say ’er name, I begs you, sir. It ain’t to be said out loud. Nor even thought too plainly by the likes of us.” He watched my lips as if they might transgress again. “But my Marie, sir … Marie was a proper Christian. She spent more time on her knees in St. Louis’s than a maid spends polishing silver. It’s only that she didn’t see the point of betting all on a single number, sir. She always figured the odds, did my Marie. She wore ’er cross about ’er neck, but made time for Yermanja. Just in case us Christians ’ad it wrong. She didn’t stint on praying to one or the other, Major Jones, but made plenty of time for both, and none’s the worse for it.”

There was no use in arguing theology with the man. Such lessons could come later. At present, I needed information. May the Lord understand and forgive me.

“And who is Yermanja? Another African snake god?”

“Oh, no, sir! Nothing of the like! African, I supposes, since it was only slaves and free negroes what took ’er up. Yermanja’s sort of like the Virgin Mary, sir. She’s the powerful goddess of the seas, begging your pardon, and she don’t mind strolling ashore, when she takes an interest. She’s for the sorts what takes up Candomblé. My Marie, now … she wasn’t interested in casting spells on rivals and such business. She only prayed for ’appiness. And for me, sir. To keep me round and jolly.”

His expression, then his head, then his shoulders sank. “Terrible it was. Too terrible for words, sir. When the Yellow Jack took ’er and the little ones, neither Yermanja nor Jesus Christ was any ’elp at all. I suppose as Marie and the little ’uns wasn’t important enough to be saved, sir. But they meant all the world to me.” A tear blurred his eyes, but he met my gaze straight on. “I doesn’t care what a man or a woman believes, sir, only whether their ’earts is good or bad.”

“Do I understand you to mean that this Queen—this voodoo priestess of whom we have been speaking—worships a sea goddess?”

“That’s what they says, sir. That’s what they tells me. And not only ’er, but other spirits besides. But you’d ’ave to ask another to learn more, sir, for there’s a limit to what I knows and we’ve already passed it by. But the lady whose name we ain’t to speak … she’s said to be a force for good, and strict in ’er observances. Not like Marie Laveau or that Marie Venin, the one what tried to poison you. They’re more concerned with gold than with goodness of any sort. I won’t say they ’ave no real powers, but what powers they ’ave come from the gullible themselves, that’s what Barnaby B. Barnaby believes. From fear, sir. And from their knowledge of plants and such, and all the secrets they gather in from their followers. They’re only frightful ’cause we makes ’em so. But … the lady of which we ain’t to speak the name, sir … she’s said to be so mighty that the other
voudouiennes
steers clear of ’er and won’t say ’er name in a whisper.”

“Do you believe she might ‘know everything’ about the murder of Susan Peabody? Or the other killings?”

“I can’t say that, sir. Not one way or the other. For I doesn’t know, to be honest.”

“Where might I find Queen—I mean, this woman?”

“I couldn’t say that neither, sir. Nor whether she’s like to speak to you at all.”

I looked at him more closely. A tone had crept into his voice that carried less forthrightness than I liked.

“There must be some way … some manner in which I might contact her?” Then I added, a bit cruelly, “Just as you hope that I will find a way to free young Raines.”

Mr. Barnaby thought on that. And I let him think. For there are times when much is to be said for not saying much. Although it is a hard practice for a Welshman.

He pondered so long that the winter sunlight crept from one plank to another.

At last, he said, in a hushed voice, “Per’aps Madame La Blanch can ’elp us. Per’aps you might go visit ’er, sir.”

“And who is Madame La Blanch?”

Mr. Barnaby chose his words with care. “She’s a clairvoyant, sir. One of them sorts. What does up medicines, as well. We can call and see if she’s in, for ’er rooms ain’t far away. Just along Bienville, between Bourbon and Dauphine.”